About two weeks ago, an unmanned helicopter Ingenuity was able to get up 16 meters during the 49th flight over the surface of Mars. The record stood for several days.

What is known

Ingenuity made its anniversary flight last week. As part of the 50th launch, he was able to rise to a height of 18 meters, which became a new record. The unmanned helicopter took 145.7 seconds to cover a distance of 322.2 meters.

Ingenuity has been on Mars with the Perseverance rover for two years now. The second anniversary of the first flight of the drone will be celebrated two days later, on April 19. On February 18, 2023, the helicopter and rover celebrated two years on the Red Planet.

According to Ingenuity project manager Teddy Tzanetos, the drone flew 1250% more than planned. For 50 missions, he was in the air for 89 minutes and covered 11.6 km. He managed to exceed the expected flight distance by 2214%.

Source: NASA